A Churchill, or factory-floor sweepings?

AS FIDEL CASTRO joked with his (paying) guests at a dinner last month to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Cohiba cigar (London price £25.50 or $40 each),Jesus Delgado was busy packing hundreds of cheap cigars into cedarwood Romeo y Julieta boxes, ready for collection by an American fake-cigar ring. The cigars--poor imitations of the famous Churchills, which sell for around £14 apiece in London--were made in a Havana workshop using waste tobacco swept off the floor of one of the city's premier cigar factories. Only the boxes and the rings round the cigars are genuine: stolen to order by a factory worker, paid $20 (ten weeks' wages) for his pains.

The Cubans, who still make the world's best cigars, are eager to take advantage of the current fashion in cigar smoking, but have not been able to meet the demand. The result is that other countries--the Dominican Republic, the United States itself, where Cuban cigars are banned--have stepped in, making their own version of classic brands.

The Cubans are fighting back, increasing production fast. Last year they made 71m genuine-brand cigars; next year they expect it will be 100m. By cultivating new tobacco fields, they hope to be producing 200m by 2000. At the same time, they are trying to wipe out the rich trade in fakes. This, claim officials, is costing the economy hundreds of thousands of dollars and bringing “our nation's most prestigious product into disrepute.”

Since last August, anyone taking more than 50 cigars out of the country has to show an official receipt, the factura, from the state enterprise Habanos S.A. Each individually numbered factura carries the name of the purchaser, his nationality and passport number, where and when he bought his cigars and even the name of the sales assistant who sold them.

Military policemen patrol the capital, rounding up cigar-hustlers and closing down the backstreet workshops where most of the fakes are made. Tourists tempted by the cigar touts (plenty of them evade the police) are liable to be disappointed by the quality of their Churchills and Esplendidos, purchased at $25 a box. Most are made from poor-quality tobacco, either sweepings or stuff bought illegally from private farmers. The state has a monopoly on tobacco buying. Being found with black-market tobacco brings a fine, for the first offence, equivalent to seven months' wages.

The tourists' frustration is likely to be compounded when they leave for home. Cuban customs now search every tourist bag suspected of containing cigars. Those unable to produce the factura will have their souvenirs confiscated.

None of this worries professional fakers, such as Mr Delgado. His American dealers bypass Cuban customs, smuggling the cigars by boat to New Orleans. And he runs his own sideline, replacing some of the better fakes with bad ones. He is not worried about the new regulations. Like many of the more professional street dealers, he bought a book of facturas from a salesgirl for $10; a $20 bribe got him access to a photocopier to run off hundreds of copies. The fake receipts should get the cigars through customs, until someone checks the details, or notices the numbers. By then, as he says, those tourists will be gone. It is not his problem.